Air Traffic Management and Unmanned Aircraft Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord West of Spithead and Lord Whitty

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 2nd reading (Hansard)
Monday 27th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her comprehensive introduction to the Bill. I apologise to her for not coming to her briefing meeting, but I hope that nevertheless she can answer some of my points.

Broadly speaking, I support the intentions of this Bill. I guess I have two interests to declare. One is that I am vice-president of BALPA. That does not mean I have the expertise of my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe or others in this House, but I am taking on board many of the points that it wishes to raise.

My second interest is slightly more tenuous, in that I inherited from the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, who was here for the earlier part of the debate, responsibility for chairing the committee that produced this report in 2015 with many recommendations. In those days, we called drones “remotely piloted aircraft systems” but we all know what we are talking about. When I took on responsibility for following up the report, I found that Ministers were somewhat reluctant to take much action in the early days. Luckily, that has now changed. There was a Bill that was aborted in the last Parliament and there has been an extension to the protection of airfields, with 5-kilometre geofencing around them—a protection that now applies to many other secure sites. Therefore, we have made progress.

I will concentrate largely on the drone aspect of this subject. I recognise that nowadays we have to accept and support the technology for the many applications of drones that affect our lives and our security, but there is also the key issue of safety in the use of drones in the air and on the ground. In addition, a range of issues raised in the report produced by the committee of the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, have not been fully addressed and they are not really addressed in this Bill. Some relate to the safety of other users in the air and on the ground, but there are also the issues of insurance, licensing, privacy and liability, and indeed there is the question of how far the multiple operation of drones by one programme and one operator is compatible with our current regulations.

The Gatwick incident and the anxieties that it raised have obviously increased the public profile of drones and the level of concern. Those concerns relate not just to an individual collision, disastrous though that might be, but to a total system being threatened by a drone being operated wrongly, whether it be the deliberate endangering of the operation of an airport or airfield, terrorism or simply a number of kids getting hold of these machines and causing disruption for a laugh. We have to develop a regulatory system that deals with both the big security issues and an individual drone being used in the wrong way.

The design and the use of unmanned and manned aircraft, and the components of manned aircraft, are important considerations and things that we need to follow through in this legislation. For example, limited testing has shown that the collision between a medium-sized drone and a screen could be catastrophic—for the screen, the flight crew and, potentially, for the passengers. The incursion of a medium or large drone into a jet engine could also be catastrophic. As I understand it, the limited testing that there has been has not turned into a fully fledged test of new aero engines, or indeed a way of ensuring the resilience of existing in-service engines. The certification process for aero engines is therefore not yet in place.

Standard testing is urgently required so that the ingestion of a drone, which could be much more damaging than the ingestion of a bird—which is part of the standard testing and certification operations—is taken fully on board. Certainly at the larger end of drones, very serious damage could be done to an engine, as well as to the body of an aircraft. However, even a small metallic drone could do serious damage, particularly to the operation of helicopter blades and so forth. It is the responsibility of the aerospace industry internationally but also of the Government to ensure that we mandate drone ingestion as part of the certification of aero engines.

We also need some changes in the air traffic control regulations to ensure adequate separation. That has long been a key feature of air traffic control between aircraft to mitigate the effects of turbulence, but it can also apply in relation to the relationship between aircraft and drones. Again, the interrelationship between helicopters and drones is probably the most acute in this respect; it could cause damage to both the helicopter and the drone as well as, potentially, damage on the ground. I hope that all these things can be addressed in the technical detail of the Bill.

I also have a number of points relating to enforcement. In recent years we have seen a big increase in the use of drones in all sorts of quite legitimate commercial operations. We have also seen the use of drones effectively for pleasure and some criminal use of them. I would like to consider in the course of the Bill strengthening the enforcement side so that not only are all operators licensed but—in my view—they have to be over 18, they have a clear record, they are not under the influence of drink or drugs and the way in which they operate and treat those drones is built into the enforcement and checking system and the police powers over them.

There is the question of, for example, deliberately removing in-built safety features from drones such as the geofencing requirements, the requirements for lights on larger drones and the telemetry features of the transponder that allow the drone to respond to the geofencing. If we remove some of those, the drone becomes a much more dangerous machine and, for all sorts of reasons, it is possible that users might be tempted to use it. Indeed, in the extreme case, there is the deliberate weaponisation of drones: terrorists or others might add blades or other damaging features to the drones or use them for carrying arms or explosives. Those are very serious breaches of safety and security, not only of a single aircraft but of a whole aircraft system and the whole area.

I also suggest that the individual machines as well as the operators need to be licensed. That is after all the situation regarding vehicles both in the air and on the ground, and there is no reason why it should not apply in this case.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

Does my noble friend agree that one of the problems is that we have such a successful drone industry that it has been loath to allow regulation to take place, but it really has to do so because there is now such a dangerous risk?

[Lord Whitty]

I agree entirely with my noble friend, and I think there are elements within the industry itself that recognise that. As with other new technologies, an industry begins to come of age when it begins to accept and contribute to better regulation to mitigate the problems in its sector.

I will also be suggesting that we need to look explicitly at the police powers in this area. The powers to ground an aircraft are not clear. The ability to enter premises or stop and search for an aircraft or for elements of an aircraft are also not yet clear. While I recognise the need for FPN for minor offences, it needs to be clearer what those offences actually are. I would also be grateful if the Minister spelled out a little how far we are getting with counterdrone technology and how rapidly we might see that in place.

I had a couple of points on Parts 1 and 2, but my voice is giving out. I hope the Minister can respond to the points that I have made.